The very purpose of dialogue is to find common ground and to creatively conceive a point of agreement where there is none.
Instead, the E.U. has argued that benchmarks would introduce tension into a dialogue and undermine its role as a "confidence-building exercise," as if the purpose of dialogue were to promote warm feelings rather than respect for human rights.
Dialogue, however, can achieve a lot more than this and the whole purpose of dialogue should be examined.
In articles describing policy dialogues, we attempted to identify the location of the dialogue, the participants involved, the purpose of the dialogue, the party that initiated the dialogue, and any policy recommendations or agreements about actions resulting from the dialogues.
"What is the purpose of any dialogue if it legitimises the Syrian regime?
"The purpose of the dialogue is to accelerate progress toward the ultimate eradication of cancer," he said in a recent telephone interview.
But he said the purpose of the dialogue was to avoid domestic strife between the two religions, not to hash out Middle East issues.
"It might be viewed as a crackpot idea," he said, "but it's valuable for the purpose of a dialogue on the traffic issue because there are limited solutions".
Since the ultimate purpose of a dialogue may be to accomplish something in the world, not only in the minds of the participants, reasoning, goal-directed planning, and action need to occur at the domain level as well.
This was perhaps a position dear to Jacobi's own heart, but it embarrassingly made him vulnerable again — this is the puzzling part about this production of Jacobi — to the charge of obscurantism that had been the purpose of the Dialogue to fend off in the first place.
The purpose of civil dialogue is to bring people together to think, create, and build community.
